Valerio Pelizzi: Solar Energy Innovation and Leadership

Valerio Pelizzi, a seasoned electrical engineer and renewable energy expert, shares his journey from growing up in Rome to becoming a leading figure in the solar PV and storage industry. Valerio shares his passion for engineering, key career milestones, and his hands-on leadership style. He offers insights into cutting-edge renewable energy technologies and discusses his ambitious projects, including integrating Solar PV, Storage, and Hydrogen solutions. He shares the challenges he overcame in Italy to becoming one of the senior figures in the UK and Italian PV Sector. Certainly one to watch for the future. 

Transcript

Welcome to the Future of Solar Photovoltaics Podcast. My name's Vikram Kumar of VENTUS Cables & Connectivity. Today I have the absolute pleasure of hosting Mr. Valerio Pelizzi, an Italian engineer. I've known him for probably 11 years' first meeting in Bluefield, Valerio welcome. Thank you Vikram for inviting me. I'm very delighted to be here and talking to you today. Fantastic and following the theme from a previous podcasts. We've done about 12 episodes so far that've been listened to in '73 countries, over 500 cities, over half the listeners are in the UK, so keep moving with the same theme. Would you like to introduce yourself, mention a bit about your early life and paint a colour, about your education background, and so on, because we feel it builds a strong bond with the people in the industry to instil an air of transparency. Yeah, sure. I grew up, I was born in Rome and grew up there, so I did all my studies there. I graduated in electrical engineering back there, and I was actually working for power distribution in the first instance. And then I came into the solar industry literally by chance, because one of my best friend started a company doing renewable energy systems, and he was telling me, look, I just founded a company that is around you. say, How come? Say, because we are doing renewable energy systems, so we want to create clean energy for the future. So you are an electrical engineer, you have to be with me. And so I started, really. My only experience in renewables at that time was my final dissertation for my MSC in Rome, which was how to create energy electricity, really, from biomasses in the CCT cycles. So and then I started back in 2008. Fantastic, Valerio, I know you from a British capacity as a Londoner. I don't ask too much about your background, but you are from Rome, you know? It's a historic place. Are you able to tell us a bit about how it was like growing up there? You mentioned you were a fanatic Roma fan? Yes, absolutely. Well, growing up in Rome is like, you know, breathing history, really, because it's the it's called the eternal city, because you can find, you know, from any age in the history, you can find evidences, which is, you know, remains, relics, or buildings, whatever. So it's something that something you just is it's that it's it's born, it's with you. You know, from the very young age. And it was fine in a way. We have this school as a very important part of my childhood and every Italian child, really. We study a lot. The difference to hear that I can see with my son is that we had homeworks every day, including the weekend. So this is much different from me. We had a different approach. The mornings at school and the afternoon at home. Time for study and time for having fun, really. So you spent quite a long time in the University of Roma studying electrical engineering. It's quite interesting because there are not many electrical engineers in the solar photovoltaics industry. For me, I find that very surprising, because essentially we're electrical engineering, power engineering projects. That's absolutely through. Yeah, I spent 10 years because I end up a break of about three years during the course of the university. So for personal reasons, it takes it took me a little bit more than expected anyway, seven years, for a five years degree, which is a sort of normal for almost everyone. I don't see most of none of my colleagues actually finished in five years' time because the final dissertation, especially, it can take from six months to a year time to do it, because, you know, it's a proper it's a proper study in the sense that you might do a real project, you might follow a real project, so it takes some time to observe, to study, and then to put in writing. So it's that's one of the reasons why it takes for most of the people more than five years. And I was no exception. Probably I was a little bit also, how can I say, lazy. I can tell that, I can say that. I was not a great student. I was more, I always liked more working rather than studying. then throughout my career, I studied a lot for new technologies, new things. I was always keen to understand, to understand them, and try to apply them while it was just on books. for me was like, I have to do them. And that's it. And answering to the second part of your question, yes, technically, we are doing, we are creating electrical energy, so we are generating electrical energy, and it's very funny that there are few electrical engineers doing that. Especially in Italy, most of the electrical engineers, they stays in the power distribution or power generation or working mostly with TSOs, with the TSO, or with the National Greed Operator or DNO's, really. TSO is transmission systems operator like National Grid in the UK, right? Yes, correct. So in Italy, you would have Terna. Its Terna, yes. Terna Spa, which is no longer a national company, even if his owned by, I think, 90% from one of the Department of Government. Right, there, do they have any connection with Enel, Enel which is now a distribution, is a pure DNO, actually. It was a state own company. Right. But Terna is, let's say, both distributionze is more local. They are in most part of Italy, not in all the parts. They are also other DNOs. going back to your personal, background runner motivation, 

What aspects of your childhood or environment influence your decision to become an engineer? 

That is a great question, because, to be honest, I was of something different from my parents, from all the other, my cousins and stuff, because I was the only one really. I wouldn't say obsessed with building things, but, you know, I. I like it very, very, very much. So I thought, you know, I started with also we start a small electrical stuff, and the final decision. So I was always, you know, I always wanted to be an engineer. The final decision to be an electrical engineer started when I was in middle school, because we started to study electromagnetism. And we did as a very easy circuit with a battery, powering a light bulb. And that was really the final decision. I want to work in that field and then, you know, in the high school, the equivalent of the A levels here, I studied in physics, electromagnetism as well. Even if in Italy, you don't choose the subjects. You do you keep doing all the subjects until the end. And that was my decision, really. I want to be a electrical engineer, building everything. I mean, I didn't know at the time it' been like on the generation side, the distribution side, but the decision was like, I want to be in that field. 

Well, I've spent my life so far in cable almost 20 years, over 12 and a half years in my own business and I've seen projects where you will have only 50m  of cable for a variable frequency drive and you'll have a team of 10 electrical engineers discuss about the details. So small project, lots of technical focus in solar, we can have a 400MW project, and sometimes not have a single electrical engineer apart from the grid connection. And so then we can't say we are surprised when you have 40 or 50 transformers fail on a single solar farm. And so the way I tried to differentiate myself is I try to work with chartered electrical engineers, because I'm a sales guy, you know, you shouldn't believe what I say anyway, but working a cable on my life, you know, I see a value for a good, good engineers, how you can reduce costs in a competent kind of way. So I think we spoke offline a bit about chartered engineers and not chartered engineers in the UK and in Italy. You did a proper degree for five years an electrical engineering degree, and would you say you're a chartered engineer in Italy? Yes, I am, even if it's slightly different, because in Italy, you have to pass on other state exam, where basically you got your qualification as a chartered engineer. So I did, and actually I did also for every sector. So in Italy, the engineering board div into three main sectors, one is IT, one is civil, and the other one is industrial. And I passed for all the three. So and I did quite a while ago now. It's 14 years ago, and yeah, it's basically the equivalent of being a chartered engineer in the UK. Right, and do you carry insurance, if people want to approach you to develop projects in Italy? Well, normally you did, but I personally not doing not having it now, personally, just for one reason, because in Italy, when you do any kind of project, you have three levels of design. The preliminary one, which normally you started for getting some planning approval, then you have the definitive one, which is the one where you set up the equipment and everything you make the preliminary electrical calculations, and then there is the third level, which is the executive one when you line basically write down the hole project with all the calculation, you chose you choose the equipment and everything. So it's ready to go in construction. And normally, when you are doing executive design, you will have insurance because you have legal responsibility. So you are accountable for what you designed. Exactly. You are always like accountable for what you designed, but being in the definitive, basically designed, what I'm doing mostly is like, I have to be in compliance with all the regulation and make sure that I apply the right regulation standards to my calculation. So basically, the risk is practically zero, because in any case, before going into construction, you should have another engineer, or yourself as well, doing the executive design and basically review everything that has been done and do a little bit more detailed calculations. I've got here on our notes to talk about solar, but before we get more deeply into that, can you describe your experience working on your final dissertation, electrical energy generated by biomass in CGT cycles? It was funny. This is the word I would use, because when my professor really proposed me, I would say, How is that possible?" I mean, why don't we trying to do these things? And even if I was already, it was already the time where actually, I was still already working in the renewal energy system because I started before my graduation. By was finally coming from directly from the professor and from the electrical engineering department, because this is something probably I shouldn't say, but I will say anyway. Electrical engineers, especially at the beginning, were looking at renewables like doing the very easy stuff, because there were not a lot of difficult calculations and stuff, especially for solar, because you don't have a lot of problems with frequency, with harmonics, even if now we have, actually. But, you know, they were all focussed on managing grids, all the notes with software predicting the power fluxes, this kind of stuff. So they were really, okay, was, okay, this is an easy task, you can do it. Something like, you know, I'm a big professor, probably I will do the grid design than as small renewable energy system really. Yeah. So, that's why I was a little bit surprised, and it was funny. It was funny because actually, I built up my experience not only on solar, which on solar and solar thermal, which I was working at the time, but also like with steam systems, biomass systems, co-generation, because really what my my dissertation was was really cogeneration, and most importantly, I started working on three generation, which is that kind of system where you have turbine, so you can you can generate, you know electrical energy, but you use the heat dissipated by the turbine to heat water or use it in your heated systems, but you can use on the reverse system like to do cool air. So like the air conditioning as well. And those system are to be honest with you, I thought there would be there would have been the future, but I didn't see a lot of systems like that. In my experience, at least in Italy, where they know the air conditioning is becoming really important, especially with the climate change now, is a typical system is like having solar PV for your electrical design and then then having a hidden system and cooling system to different systems, not just in the same with a co-generator, three generator. What we forget England how important air conditioning is in warmer climates and, you know, my father says, you know, England is like, conditioning compared to Delhi, so.. It will come, I think I will come, unfortunately, in that, if we can fight climate change properly, if they you know, the authorities finally recognised that they're doing something practical about that, probably we will not, but I'm a little bit sceptical about that. It is frightening that the climate change, because for me to see the change in England, how much rain we've had this year is unprecedented. But sticking to some of the priority topics, why did you not become a chartered engineer in the UK? Well, because when I moved here, I was already into operations, the operation side of renewable systems. So and I really didn't see the need of being a charter engineer. To be honest with you, at the beginning, I thought about that, and I I I tried to get some information out to get that, to be recognised. It would have been fine with me, becoming an engineer, but at that time, I was I was really a manager rather than a proper engineer. So I say, well, did do this, we benefit my career now, say, not really, so sort of, you know, I didn't think about that. Why I focused on the chartered engineers so much, especially electrical engineers, is because, well, I've worked on over two and a half gigawatts of projects in this country. I've done some abroad as well. And the projects that run like a disaster against the projects that runs smoothly I found that the more money you spend on development in specifying a project correctly, the lower cost you CAPEX and the less headaches you have during grid connection and commissioning, because things work. And also less OPEX, also less OPEX, which is not you know, still relevant. And the nature of the industry is because since Brexit, you know, lots of changes and EPCs disappeared from the market, there's been a glut of too many people doing development. This far more developers than there are EPCs and often when they sell these sites a proper investor takes site, they put down and say, 20% down deposit, and then they need to raise 80% project finance from a major corporate finance bank, Lloyd's Bank, or whoever. And because the project finance is based on milestone on payments, once the design is wrong, you are stuck. Yeah, you are stuck in and you have to redo it again properly. You can't redo it even because you're worried, you lose your project finance. And everyone's committed and then the lawyers are involved and nobody wins from that kind of situation. And so where I try to do things differently is you try to do things correct from the beginning, which should be the way, the right approach, really. This is something that, you, I'm a developer myself now at the moment. I'm developing here in the UK and in Italy and you know, I have some colleagues, especially in the past. Now it's changing a bit. They were doing like, oh, let's do like a preliminary design, like it is, and then we ask for staff, say.. Always like, why? Why I have to do twice the job.. yep, because at the end of the day, if you do something like just to get some approval, some planning permission, and so on, okay, you got it fine, then you have to change completely to the design, maybe, especially I'm talking about the electrical design rather than, for example, the PV number of panels. But you have to change the design, because then you have to do some preliminary, real preliminary calculation for the grid connection. So why on earth you want to do your design twice? So I always start basically directly from day one with definitive design, which means that it's a real project that can work as it is. So the only way is that is not going to be built in that way is just because of the availability of equipment, because you start deciding with some equipment and maybe, you know, the fund of the new owner, the EPC is has a framework agreement with another company, so they need to change your design. But what I'm trying to do always when a design a system is something that is real, so  an EPC can take that design and just build it up. 

Right, and would you consider becoming chartered in this country if we wanted to come to you for signing off projects? That is, um.. This is something that I'm thinking of. It depends really on what the future, what is a expected in the future. It's definitely something that I don't discard right away. It can become something. Not at the moment, because I'm pretty busy in developing projects, but it is definitely something I will think of. I was a young guy when I started in this market here now, you know, I'm over middle aged and the market moves very much in cycles. So in the beginning, you have domestic boom, you have a commercial PV boom, you have a development boom, Eventually you saturate development and then you need to move into EPC. We need to do 50 gigawatts in the next 10 years or so. And at the moment in the market can't support even 500 to 1,000 MW a year, and now we are in a strange new reality with artificial intelligence, because a lot of the investors are not electoral engineers, but now you've got these tools that you can use, you shouldn't use AI for proper engineering, but just to have conversation, educated conversations, you know, we had customers wanted to connect one and one and half megawatts to micro grid, not appreciating how much power it really is. one and half megawatts PV doesn't sound like a lot. When I was asking ChatGPT, how much power do you need to move a train? It's about one and a half megawatts, something like that. So people don't appreciate what they are plugging in. Exactly. This is a real true. This is interesting you mentioned the AI. I mean, it's. It's interesting how it will develop in a sense that people are worried that there will be the AI, we will not have any more people doing the job. Okay, so if something goes wrong. Who is accountable for that? A machine? No one's accountable, exactly. First of all, but the point is, it's we need to need to embrace the future and the new developments in technology, because they will definitely help you out. I was yesterday, well, not yesterday, during the bank holiday the weekend, I was in the Peak district, and I was in a village that there is the Tramway Museum, and I saw the project of the trains at the beginning, all done on paper, while now we have AutoCAD, we have personal computer, we basically do the same job I don't know,  10, 100 times quicker. Meaning that the tools are fundamental. They are crucial because they can really help you out in deciding of a well designed project. The main point is, you or the people have to guide them, because tools themselves, they don't know if they're doing right or wrong. They just do what you ask for. So even with the AI, it's important who has the question to the AI to make the right answer? So The AI is not reliable. I can tell you that it makes elementary mathematical errors, but for me, when I'm working in sales and I just want to paint a picture about something, it's good to have a flavour, but then this is why I asked about chartered engineers, because when it gets serious, then I'm going to chartered engineers one I work with Steve McFadyen and he's developing cable engineering software, specifically for solar can be used for electrical engineering in general as well. He says don't use AI as well, but sometimes we don't know what we don't know. And so now we move on to how you got into solar. Yeah. After you did your degree, you start with, is it undu or undu? Adunaza? Well, if you talk with Italian people, they will say undo adunanza, but actually, it was really undu, because the idea behind the company was to undo the normal approach to energy. So it refresh it in a different way. That's why it was the company was focussed on renewable energy systems, which at that time was solar PV, solar terminal, a little bit of micro wind, and cogeneration. So and there where I built up all my most of my technical knowledge at the time around the renewable energy systems. And what I added to the company was the grid connection part of it, because we started from residential, then it would become C&I – commercial and industrial, and then just when I basically I was leaving, we were doing some utility scale. At that time in Italy, it was under a megawatt because there there was a special tariff for those projects with what is called the minimum guaranteed prices from the grid for exporting on top of the incentives. So it was a very exciting time of my life because I was basically, I studied completely a new thing that I never I never studied before. you're saying on a Linkedin profile that you actually did some ground mount pv projects all of it back in 2009, where Solar was very much a foreign concept in the UK. Yes, well, in Italy, mostly, they were doing in the South Italy, clearly. And there were some in Tuscany. We were one of the few people that did something in around Rome, really, because there was at that time, not much of PV there. There were some Spanish company, which I cannot mention clearly, they did few five megawatt sites at the time. I think some 10 megawatts as well. There was a big one, actually, probably 20 or 30, I just going by memories, might be mistaken, but really few compared to other counties like Sicely or Puglia, where they were a massive development of PV utility scale PV. And so you were in this first job as a project engineer for two years and two months, and had a couple of gigs in between, and then you were Vector Quatro and then moving on to OFGEM in the UK. 

What led you to move to the UK? When did the first idea come in your mind? 

Hmm that is a very interesting question. Mainly, my move here was work related, in that I really wanted to explore new things, try to learn as much as I could and also have the chance to build up my career. In Italy, at the time, I was a little bit closed, was a closed way. especially because there were not a lot of Italian developers at the time, because most of the utility scale projects were done by foreigners. Spanish company, German companies, British companies as well, because when I was in Vector Quatro, actually, we were managing some assets from a British company. And that was the reason really why I moved. I decided to move into Vector Quattro, as in the asset management, into basically into operations because in 2011, there was like a disaster that we a very short sighted minister of the Italian government that basically shut down all the incentive schemes. Right. And so basically he destroyed completely, the only industry that was growing and doing business in Italy at that time. There was already a sort of recession in Italy, and the only really industry that they were doing they were creating jobs, they was doing great, the renewable energy ones, and it just simply destroyed it. So I say, okay, fine, no new developments, probably, because the cost at that time were still quite high without incentives. So I need to jump into operations. And that's why I moved to Vector Quatro Milan and then with the idea, anyway, to move something, you know, the Italian board as well, a bit too tight to me. I said, I want to see something different. I want to see what is it, the industry in Europe and globally, really. And so I moved and funny enough, I was I tried to apply for jobs, public jobs in Italy. I was never called for an interview. Actually, I was working. I passed the first stage interview at the GSC, basically at that time was the manager of the Italian electrical systems. So, you know, what better than an electrical engineer to work there? I was never called for the second interview, the second and final interview, say, okay, fine, it's time to move. And here, I started here with a very broken English, probably, I still have a broken English, but at that time it was even worse. And I was hired by OFGEM, so a public government agency. And I had a chance to keep the developing my knowledge on not on solar PV, but on the heating system, so for solar thermal steam, biomass, all those kind, all those different things. And also, it was very important because it gave me the perspective from the government side of incentive schemes or generally how to see the renewable energy systems. So for Quintas Energy, and the Spanish company, which at that time, it had quite a decent portfolio of asset management already, and then, you know, now they boomed like one of the top company for asset management in the UK probably the number one, I guess, and but yeah, had the chance to basically to see to touch with my hands, what was the solar industry in the UK. Because with them, I managed at that time, the biggest portfolio in the UK. I was the portfolio manager for a fund that I cannot name here, now, but at that time, it was the biggest portfolio in the UK. they had a mix of very big utility scale, different technology, so meaning that also thin film, a couple of projects with them, it was interesting, and it definitely something that opened my views and my knowledge about how to do things differently. 

With myself, my mind wonders in so many different directions, especially during the lockdown, I was working, almost every single day. Sometimes there wasn't any work to do, so I would just read random history books, or listen to audio books and you are Roman and you know, in science, there's a thing called standing on the shoulders of giants or in your case, you know, maybe there are ghosts from the past, you know, because Julius Caesar had involvement in London and you know, reading on ChatGPT Emperor Claudius established about a century later, so, you know, these are just random thoughts that crossed my mind and at the same time, I was when you in your first soar job as a project engineer, I was working Honeywell, training people to jump from wind turbines as a product manager for safety a hight. We were chasing London Array offshore wind farm, which was supposed to be over one gig, but I think they stopped the construction maybe just over 600 megawatt because of some issues with migratory birds, and now it's interesting because the substation for Cleve Hill is also nearby, as well, the biggest solar project in construction in the country now, almost 400 megawatts. But I remembered that period between 2010 - 2012 quite well because you know, here we are with offshore wind, which is running very slowly and then solar’s growing massively, which convinced me to start my own business and to get into solar with Leon in Switzerland, but I had also my eye on the Italian market. I think there was a year then where Italy may have done 10 gigawatts out of the blue. From almost nothing? Well, I don't think that much, honestly, but yeah, it was a boom, really, because that actually I can add something about, you know, that minister the shut down, the incentive schemes is that because the schemes weren't thought properly. Right. Meaning that basically the tariff, the last tariff, you know, the last tier was from 200 killo-watts onwards, meaning that if you at the time we were doing like 250kW site project, you were doing a decent return, but if you were doing like 10 meawatts with that tariff, basically, you payback return was like two or three years. Right. And then for the rest of 17 years, you were getting a lot of money. And that was the boom, where basically everyone was building up, and in my experience, I saw a lot of very bad projects, because they didn't care. They were earning so much money, so they even they, you know, the performances of those plants were really poor. They didn't care. As long as they didn't suffer any faults or something like that, is to stop the production, they were happy because they were earning tons of money. And that was one of the main regions of the boom in Italy, clearly being in southern Europe with a high level of irradiation helped a lot as well, compared to other countries, but there are a few factors that contributed to this boom. And I think they started in Spain a slightly earlier, 2007 and 8, then 9,10, Italy, and then 11,12, 13 maybe in the UK. I can see that the boom here in the UK lasted until 2016. roughly, when they shut down the last ROC scheme. there were, for those years, there were a lot of construction going on, a lot of EPCs coming from Greece, Spain, Italy, as well, they were the countries with the most experienced in solar at the time, Germany, sorry, not forget, Germany as well, because even if they are much more focussed on residential and C&I, rather than utility scale, they clearly built up a lot of knowledge and experience in solar. So those that I think probably 90% of EPCs and company doing solar in the UK were from those countries. But I have to say, your English is fantastic and thank you. You're adding to the dynamism of London because, through you, we can be active in Italy, because you're fluent in Italian, and you are speaking fantastic English, and you're the solar industry. You're too kind. I'm a businessman, you see, so you see only opportunities, and you've had a very interesting exposure because you've seen what you know, bad policies can do to the industry grab boom and bust cycle. I remember being at the Valencian embassy and about retroactive duties in Spain and they're all coming to this industry because there wasn't much competence. But then for yourself, after OFGEM, and you also had a Quintas a very charismatic Dutch electrical engineer, Arnoud Klaren, he's there at the moment, he's done a podcast with us. But you speak in the notes about your achievements where, you know, you've constructed maybe over 130 megawatts split into 20 projects over 18 months. Was that with Canadian solar? It was with Canadian solar. That was one of the most amazing experience in my life. We were literally a bunch of people, hired to do something that the company itself really didn't know the real extent, because Canadian solar is a module manufacturer. Then they had the minded because of their experience in Canada doing already O&M, okay, we want to build up the energy division, meaning that providing all the surfaces from development up to O&M, really. So and we were the first team globally to do that, doing development, EPCs, asset management and O&M. And I was hired because of my experience, clearly for the asset management, and a little bit of O&M, I didn't have really that much at that time just for more project in my experiences in Italy, but I was the only, only guy in the team. No, I was the only guy generally speaking. And it was an amazing team, amazing professionals. I learned a lot because we, I would say, apart from myself, we were a team of top class professional. Right. I mean, if you think of building not only developing, but building in 18 months, 130 mega megawatts from scratch, is a massive achievement. And it was a great team because we were, everyone was doing everything, you know, a little bit of everything, because the development guys were engineers, that were doing also a bit of construction, they had insight from construction as well. They had construction from me, they had insight from me as well, from my O&M experience. So, you know, thinking a little bit further than just, I need to build, I need to last two years for the guarantees and then that's it. We were building something more, you know, long sighted, I would say, with the idea of keeping those assets, basically. So they want the assets to work properly, you, not spending a lot of money because they were bad projects. And then, again, it was an amazing experience, amazing people. We really I was happy to go to the office. It was hard work because, you know, we were working long hours most of the days, but it was rewarding, because nice people, and then we achieved, basically. I remember probably on one project we did a sort of miracle because we did thanks also we did the EPC team and the subcontractors. We had the time, we did five megawatts in just one month.. It was great. It was something that I clearly, it had to be you need a little bit of luck as well. You know, good weather, good materials, no delay in procurement, this kind of stuff, but still, there was like, you know, the gem of the portfolio in terms of quality and speed of the construction. It was a great experience. I learned a lot and actually was the first time I moved into management, proper management, because my role there was not only providing my knowledge and building up and looking after assets, but was also building up, the procedures, the, the idea of the company itself for what concern, as a management O&M. Clearly I was an adapting your name sort of O&M procedures from Canada to Europe specifically UK.. But still, I was bringing the European approach, I would say, into something that was done in North America, really, was different. And again, it was the same, probably even more for asset management, because they didn't have really a clue on the whole, well, not total clue, but they were only looking after the technical aspects, because they weren't involved in the financial management of an asset before. So we did, for the first time, for Canadian solar, which is now rebranded as a Recurrent energy, because already in my time, they acquired recurrent energy to basically lead the energy division globally, but it was a two way discussion, you know, brainstorming, because they were doing only for US. Actually, at the time, mainly only for California, really. I don't think they would I'm talking about Recurrent. I don't think they were doing any projects outside California at the time. But anyway, so it was a brainstorm in trying to build up the global culture for us and management and O&M. So very proud of what we achieved, very proud to have worked with great professional and, you know, I always have good memories about that. I remember your face being all over the media in this time and hoping one day I will get to meet with you and I remember also with my clients of the time, you, 50 megawatt projects getting built in six weeks to me, as an Indian immigrant, London is the beating heart of Europe and the biggest own goal I know is controversial, but fact is the biggest own goal we could have ever scored was to Brexit referendum, we're coming up to almost eight years and you, we've gone from building 50 megawatt solar farms in six weeks to, I mean, catastrophic labour shortages lots of people, were alienated by Brexit and, you know, moved to different countries and I think that's taken something away from us, all at the same time and the U.S. is doing, well, very well in green energy. They have massive schemes, which is taking the gravity away. China's growing crazily. They've got the biggest electric car manufacturer, they've installed hundreds of gigawatts of PV, India is the largest growing economy in the world, and now we have a fragmented Europe with war going on in Ukraine, with political division all over the place, and I think that only adds to the economic chaos, which we hope we can move away from, but one of the big names of the time was Bluefield, because it's a FTSE 250 London Stock  exchange listed, solar fund, alongside Foresight and Next Energy. And when you're young and you start business, you want to work in the Stock exchange, and you were very much a face of Bluefield for me at the time. Are you able to speak about how you got to Bluefield. Why did you leave Canadian and what was your time like there for a year and five munutes, five months, sorry? Yeah, it was like,. I was shocked at the beginning. Because as you see, I was looking at Bluefield like, you know, one of the best companies to work for. They were doing great, they were the first company to launch a fund into the London Exchange. So it was like, you know, it was a target. And then I wasn't really thinking about leaving Canadian solar. We were actually expanding because I was, we were opening the different countries in market, so Italy, Spain, Israel as well. So we were planning to grow. So from the UK,  basically our team, even if it was the EMEA team, we were the UK team only at the beginning. When the UK was sort of settled, we started looking after different countries and we were opening different markets. So I wasn't really looking to move, because, you know, a lot of it still a lot of excitement, a lot of new things, new challenges, and so on. But then, a friend of mine, it was like we were at lunch, it was it was it was telling me, okay, well why don't you come and work with me? I say, what are you telling? You're not looking for anything. Say, "How do you know? Well, you know, Bluefield is a company that I always look if there is like an opening or something, because even if I'm not thinking about moving from Canadian solar, you know, it's something it's a company that you really aspire to in a way. And I say, well, you know, I can tell you something. We are creating a new company, you know that we have the investment company, the first one, the partners, then we have the asset management company, the services. We are now building, we are now creating, not building creating, the O&M company. They say, why don't you come and work with us? I was like, literally shocked. Say, Okay, that would be interesting because it would have been the first time in my life where I could have shapen, shaped, a company from scratch, giving you know, bringing my ideas, literally forming and shaping the company on how I was thinking and an O&M company should be, because at that time, one of the main topics I was discussing in conferences with colleagues was trying to make a new approach O&M, because O&M really was always at service that was sort of, I wouldn't say neglected, but something like, okay, we have to do it because we have to, not really thinking on how to do it efficiently or properly. I remember back in 2015, I was one of the only two people talking about predictive maintenance. Right. And the other guy was Francesco Girardi from Bluefield.. And people were looking at us like, you know, shows, what they are talking about? Why do they have to do this kind of stuff? What does it mean? And we were the only two people, as far as I remember, they were talking about that. We were already thinking, you know, ahead. And the friend was not Francesco, because at that time he was just a colleague in the industry. And then, basically, the opportunity was working with Francesca as a chairman as, you, as a CEO of the new company and building up this O&M company where we can put our ideas, because at the end, we were sharing this new view on how O&M should have been, and we put into it clearly was more like on the operational side, so building up the culture, building up the structure, the business model, the operation themselves, what was needed, the procedures and processes. It was a big job. It was a big job. So, and it was exciting because, again, I had the chance to learn a lot because at that time, I was I was working also with the finance department, which clearly they helped me out on building up the business model of the company. But so they really the sense and the touch on how and where you can make the difference to make a business profitable and so again, it was great. Clearly my first task was building up all the culture and the management of the company itself. So keep using subcontractors for the actual field work. And then second part was, okay, we are ready. Now let's bring engineers into the company. And then I start all the, you know, health and safety procedures, tools, vans, setting up everything, the meantime, I was building my team around me anyway. We were already seven people, clearly only the management, because the first task was to manage in time, all the Bluefield portfolio first, and then that was my idea, actually. I don't' mix up too many things. So and the second part was bringing the actual man power in the field. And which was at that time, then I decided to leave, because you know, we had different views on how to go. Not really different views on how to go ahead, but by my my balance between work and life was a little bit distressed at the time because I was splitting my time between Bristol and London and I was living in London. It was quite hard. I had a small child at the time. I was missing a lot of moments. And I really, because of my family, let's say management, we didn't, we couldn't move to Bristol, so I decided it was for time for me to leave. I didn't hide all the manpower we needed, but I basically laid out the plan for the future. So I say, from now on, it doesn't matter of keep going in this direction because clearly we didn't onboard the whole portfolio in once, but we did project by project time by time, really area by area by area, because I built up different areas where you have the, you know, the engineers and looking after some assets, really. So at that time, I decided to leave, it was too much stress for me and really, I didn't want to miss out too much of my my life. You know, my life it's not only work. Even if I enjoyed a lot, I'm considering myself lucky because I do doing for a job, something that I love, but still, there are other part of my life that I would like to live, really. So, but again, it was a great moment. I am proud of what we achieved and yeah, so. 

Well, I remember that time, but Bluefield is a brand, you know, they treat their people with respect and people want to work for them, and they are in Bristol. I went there recently to do a podcast with Mr. Rob Tippet, and there is a buzz. That is one of my guy, I'm so proud, they really did that career, because, you know, as a leader, as a manager, you won't all your employees to grow, to learn, to become more and more. I'm proud that now he's basically doing's my position now, so. There is like an artistry about Bristol with Banksy and all of these things, but going back to your early comment about Mr. Francesco Girardi, I looked up to him a lot. I learned a lot from him. It was a strange time because a lot of projects were built in a rush, and some of them went legal and before the disputes were settled, they started already new projects. I signed more NDAs in that time, the period between 2012 to 2016 than any other time in my life. I don't even remember why I signed half the NDA for,  so Francesco, I remember visiting Solar Farms with him and he had tremendous amounts of knowledge, like people put his string cables into rails with sharp edges. We were one of the few people to say, you know we need to separate galvanically DC string copper cables from, you know the structure which might be steel or  aluminium, or whatever, there's also safety concerns of to have somebody from the fund take that level of detail. So on the one side, we had too many orders, you know, my wife ran out of printer paper. There were so many orders. On the other side, the industry almost collapsed because of feed in tariff changes, MIP, because of Brexit, and then you had this O&M period, and it is a stressful environment because you're carrying the baggage from EPCs that might not exist or terms that might not be appropriate. And so the market almost pretty much died after Brexit, after the Brexit referendum, and the only company that was active from my customer base was subsidy free in the UK, other than international projects in the Netherlands and Chile was Gridserve, here aI came across you again. Until then I'd never heard about string optimisers. I knew about module optimisers, but from Bluefield, you ended up in this place called AMPT. Are you able to tell us a bit about that? Your five years working on string optimisers? Well, yeah, absolutely. Um, actually, uh, at that time, when I left Bluefield, I was thinking about what's next. I did some consultancy because of my experience, but I really didn't know. I wouldn't say I didn't know what to do, but sort of, I was thinking what to do next, if you know what kind of aspect of my experience would like to push onwards. So they came pretty strongly to me. This company said, you are the right person working with us, and, we want you to be part of the team, we want to build to open the European market. We have a strong US market already and so on, and I was intrigued, to be honest, because I'm not not even if I'm I consider myself a people person, meaning that, you know, I'm good in dealing with people. I'm not really a salesman. I have some skills, some say skills, but completely honest with you, I don't feel too comfortable being a salesman. Right. But being with them, it was another challenge, because it was not being a salesman. First of all was selling a technology, an idea in Europe at that time, rather than, you know, an equipment, a device. So in that specific, you know, for this perspective, it's not really the pure sales. It's something slightly different. And there was a challenge to open a market for someone that for something completely new and innovative, that wasn’t present in any part in Europe. It was that module optimisers, but it was more like residential C&I market rather than utility scale, because, you know, when we're talking about tens of thousands of modules, you can imagine as an electrical engineer, the first things is, imagine adding tens of thousands of discontinuity points. It's like crazy an O&M perspective, from an engineering perspective, it's something like, would you take that risk? Because it involves, it might involves a lot of O&M efforts. And then I was these guys came and say, we have a string optimisers, so one device, maintenance free, they can, you know, improve a different a lot of things. and I would say, okay, this can work. The financial were satisfactory, financial, I mean, for the project, for CAPEX and so on, and I say, that could be interesting. So we started working I started working with with them and I tried to open the market. One of the most innovative companies, as you mentioned, is Gridserve, was one of the first companies, and, yeah, so we started. We did also with some other major funds, Spain and UK, mostly Italy as well, actually. We were going to Seoul and sort out some issues they have as you correctly said, there were a lot of bad projects when they were built in a rush. So we were more like correcting issues. So repowering or revamping projects rather than new builds. Even if now is the time where there will be important to have them in the new build site. It was great. I mean, it was actually, I thought I learned another perspective to, even to design, thinking about something that you normally or you weren't used to think. It was always this, you discussion about what is bad, what is best? Strings or central inverters. And I've never been a fan of being like extremistic. It's like it depends on the project. It depends what you need to achieve. It depends from several factors, not not to to to disregard or to the pricing. Because, you know, CAPEX actually still a very important parameters of a project. It's basically the one because the green flag or not to project. And then, you, so, I mean, you have a variety of solution where you can build up, you can design no build up, you, sorry, you can design your asset. And adding the knowledge of string optimisers is one of them as well. Again, it depends. Personally, I think they had a very innovative, a great idea because basically they were moving the electronic part from the converters, the inverter into something different. So having it's true that you have two devices, but you have two devices that are simpler. When simpler in electrical engineering means more robust and less issues. Because if you have one device trying to do everything, it's always a mess because you know, you can, you always have some missions normally and no, you have the same experience as me in the O&M now, a lot of things go wrong. And not just because of bad design, but just because if you overuse something, you're expecting, you know, premature, premature failures, basically, or failures generally speaking. So I think that this can be something to look after the future. And especially now that we are integrating BESS into renewable energy assets that it can be a game changer. BESS as in battery energy store solution. Yes.. So one comment I want to make about AMPT and Gridserve is, you know, that was a period where there was a lot of construction going on in the UK and suddenly Mr. Michael, Mr. Michael Vasakis of Gridserve of the CTO phones me up and he has this amazing project. for me, it's mind blowing, how you can have the sun generating electricity, but then you have also reflected generation as well, and you have co-location of batteries. There's a nice lovely video by Griderve on YouTube, on York Solar Farm, and then, all the learning we had from the previous eight years or so, we put everything into York Solar Farm, and still learn lessons because in the early days, you have 250 watt modules, now suddenly you got 500, 600 watt modules, something 700, 700 even and so you start to have almost one kilowatt modules in certain fault conditions, how you safely manage that was a very interesting and learning and mind blowing experience with Michael and then all of the learning from York and Hull Solar Farm was put into Cirencester Solar Farm.. bought all of this together, co location of batteries on the same bus bar, we're landing, battery circuits as well as the solar circuits, doubling the sizes of the combiner boxes, and then I can't mention for legal reasons the names, I'll go to established players in the UK, Europe and they're building sites which just 10 year old designs. And this is happening even now. So this takes us nicely into the future of Solar Photovoltaics, because you've listed now that you are a sales agent for AMPT, so it looks like they clearly like keeping in touch with you and they trust to you, but you've also got two of your own companies INGEP and PowerG srl. So as we come towards the end of our podcast, we've got about five minutes, are you able to comment a bit about your two new companies, what you do as a sales agent for AMPT, and what do you think is the future of solar photovoltaics, specifically looking at the technology and how you can see the UK getting 50 gigawatts in the next 10 years? Well, INGEPT is my own company, and PowerG is not my own company. I'm the technical director for them, and we are developing BESS and PV in Italy, as still as a different project not co-located yet. And yeah, so that's it' basically being back, a proper electrical engineer now. A designer, making electrical calculation, which I love a lot, and making sort of my own software, what probably is too arrogant call it software because basically it's an Excel, a spreadsheet. where I put all the calculation, try to automatize a little bit. And the future for solar PV to me is bright.. is bright because there are new technologies coming on, coming to the market, perovskite, perovskite, I don’t know the exact pronunciation for modules. So they are always thinking something new. And as you correctly said, you know, the design of 10 years ago is not the design we have now. Even if you use, let's say, an old approach, or rather than old, I would say, a conservative approach. So you design what you know best, the ratio, when we started the designing solar, I was like 1.1 back 15, 16 years ago. Now you go up to 1.5, even in South Italy, because even if equipment changed and improved. We have much more experience on everything. We are really now even real numbers of what is the degradation is, because since the beginning, anyone was selling module say, oh we guarantee 80% at 25 years. But basically, now we are 25 years old modules. We know exactly if it was 80% or more. So we have much more knowledge anyway. And based on that knowledge, we know also where the failure were mostly and where we have to improve. So I'm expecting new things like string optimisers, but even different approaches to things. And something that would be important in the future would be also how renewables can ease the pressure on GRIDS, which means storage, mostly, but not only storage, because we have also hydrogen, and all those are just storage of energy, but you need to generate it energy, and this can be the answer for the unpredictability of PV and wind. You can use storage to just to level up. Basically, and be available where needed, which is what normally is the first things that people argue against the renewable energies. We are not yet in a point where renewables can be the only source of energy. I don't know if we in the future we will be, I hope so, but again, we don't know yet, but I see a lot of interesting challenges in the future and I see I still see a bright future. There are with just one hard stop, which is the government. As soon as they acknowledge something, you know, they can actually we are here not to to be shark and you to just to make money, but clearly, we are not working for free. Yes, for sure. Yes, yes. But between completely ignore, you know, climate or needs of people is something that the solar industry actually is different from other industries, because you can still make a good money out of that. But being mindful and be aware of also needs of people, of communities, of environment as well. I mean, it's something it's not something that are two different aspects. They are all all the same. And it's just a matter of trying to find people that are not thinking about their own how to say, rhe problem is, the main problem is... the old cast of people, how to say in English, you know, the lobby of interest the lobby of interest for I don't want to change things because I will lose my share of the market and I still, if the moment government or authorities in general will acknowledge that we want to go that direction, all those people will understand, okay, we adapt, to a different, you know, business model, and we can truly embrace also renewables. There is already some companies that is doing it. There are a lot of greenwashing, to be honest with you, just for political reason, but there are also some giant in the fossil fuel industry that are doing something. Maybe it's not enough, maybe it's not that much, but still, it's a start. Every long journey start from the first step.. And ultimately, we are solar farming and farming is a difficult occupation and itself. You need to look at the Punjab region in India and the air pollution that created from the agricultural waste that's burned. And these farmers, they are in debt, they need to generate wheat, even there's oversupply in the market, so people say competition with land is actually the opposite because if you keep putting fertiliser and keep extracting all the nutrients from the soil, you damage the water table, you damaged the land, you create deserts. It actually can help agriculture, especially because of the climate change. You know, panels… I just learned because I was speaking to a farmer, and entrepreneurs say, they are making a lot of fuss, especially in Italy, about using land for solar, while, for example, I'm growing peppers. I didn't know that peppers to become yellow, orange, and red, they need a lot of hot weather, they don't need direct sun. So basically, for example, now at the moment, it's illegal having, let's say, a plant, a solar PV on agricultural land, you know, a ground mounted, but actually, people that it grow peppers needs that because there would be a lot of still hot weather in Italy, but they would be shadowed, so they will grow properly instead of being burned. This is one of the things. And legislators that said, no that they pretend not to know that. Yes and so. 

So and as we come towards the close, because we are running out of time, there is infinite number of things we can talk about, but there is an important project we started. Which was paused for in a numerous reasons, which is how to do gigawatt scale solar farms. This is the way in India, Australia, and the US. We started a project together with Tyco, about insulation piercing, completely eliminating string cables and plugging direct, and how the string optimisers can have distributed maximum PowerPoint tracking, and now it's interesting that Huawei have run into difficulties in the European and Western markets in general, which has left a massive hole in the industry, so there's so many things we can follow up on, but with respect to a message to your listeners, before we close a session. Do you have any last words? Well, thank you. Thank you for hosting me. It was our great chat. And again, high hope the review would be bigger and bigger and bigger. Thank you. It absolutely will be. There's a talk of 75 terrawatts, worldwide, so, I'll look forward to catching up with you offline and thanks very much for joining us today. Thank you, Vikram, thank you.